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Oscar Nominations

More big shots in Beverly Hills than usual had to get up early today because, in a stab at making the awards at least look populist, the Academy expanded the Best Picture category to include ten nominations instead of just five. Not that this will make any difference in the final results. Nor should it change what we choose in our Oscar pools. After all, when it comes to making Oscar picks, the rule is simple: Always go for the safe choice—not what you think is the safe choice, but what Hollywood does. This year, there could be no safer choices than the ones for Best Supporting Actress and Actor, where Mo’Nique and Christoph Waltz are the night’s surest shoo-ins. Not only were they 2009’s most unforgettable villains—without them, Precious and Inglourious Basterds would have been nothing. Ever since I saw Julie & Julia, I thought Best Actress would be a battle between Meryl Streep and—someone else. For a long time, I thought that someone would be newcomer Carey Mulligan, whose elegant turn in An Education announced the arrival of a delightful new talent. Then came The Blind Side. This wasn’t merely the year’s biggest hit to star a woman, but **Sandra Bullock’**s performance as Leigh Ann Tuohy revealed this hugely popular actress in a memorable new light. Suddenly, she was the frontrunner. You see, because Streep seems to be nominated for the statuette every single year (she actually hasn’t won for more than a quarter century), it’s easy to think she’ll always have another shot next year. Not so Bullock, who’s someone the Academy would really like to reward. She’s been a profitable leading lady for fifteen years. She’s deservedly well liked (you’ll rarely meet a star who’s nicer). And her success in The Blind Side lets other performers—most of whom could never hope to be as brilliant as Streep—dream that one day they, too, will find the magic role that makes them worthy of an award. This is Bullock’s year. This same is true for Jeff Bridges, the best Hollywood screen actor of the last 35 years (yes, better than Pacino and De Niro and Penn), whose role as a broken-down country singer in Crazy Heart is the purest Oscar bait. Now, he does face strong competition: **George Clooney’**s melting suavity in Up in the Air, **Colin Firth’**s touchingly understated performance in A Single Man, and **Jeremy Renner’**s mad-virile turn as a bomb-defuser in The Hurt Locker. But while these actors are all terrific, Bridges is going to beat them. Here’s why: Old Hollywood loves Bridges for being so quietly brilliant (and so Oscarless) for so long, while Young Hollywood loves him for playing a role it worships—The Dude in The Big Lebowski. Until mid-December, Best Picture looked to be a race between Precious, Up in the Air, and The Hurt Locker, which should make Kathryn Bigelow the first woman ever to win the Oscar as Best Director Then came Avatar, a movie that perfectly embodies the film industry’s dream of a Best Picture: It took a huge gamble, employed actors and crew by the thousands, and in seven weeks, became the biggest box-office movie of all time; heck, it even boasted a liberal message that drove conservatives crazy. While few people out here actually think it’s artistically the best film (that accolade would probably go to The Hurt Locker), it’s undeniably the movie that best fits the industry’s sense of itself. Avatar reminds the whole world that, when it comes to making breathtaking entertainments, there’s only one Hollywood.